James Frog (1925-)
}} James was born on the 22nd October 1925, in Richmond, London, Middlesex to Jedidiah (1904) and Camilla Frog (1905). His brother Albert was born on the 15th March 1927, when James was 1 and a half and his sister Mary on the 12th August 1929, when James was nearly 4. James grew up with a large family, including his grandparents, great-parents, uncles and aunts, great-uncles and great-aunts, cousins and many other family members. However when James was born his Uncle Carlos and cousin Eduardo resided in Mexico. As James grew older, his fascination of cars grew ever more with James being enamoured with any car he would come across. When James was just 13, in 1938, his Uncle Humphrey gifted him a car for his birthday, which also helped fuel his obsession. James quickly learned how to become a mechanic and even at a young age was very skilled with all manner of vehicle. In 1943, he joined the Royal Air Force where he become a mechanic tasked with repairing and servicing aircraft. In was around this time James met fellow mechanic and life-long friend, Eric, who was also very interested in cars. In 1944 James, through the course of his work, met Susan, an agent working for the MI5, MI6 and S.A.S (Special Air Service). James and Susan soon became friends and later became romantically involved and began a relationship, they got married on the 5th June 1945. Susan came from a highly affluent family and their wedding was attended by many family and friends, including many of Susan’s relatives who has traveled from Mykonos, a Greek Island. They lived a luxurious lifestyle and enjoyed spending time on holiday together, especially on Susan’s yacht. Susan founded several businesses and inherited others from her family who were eager to help her, so James’ car collection became more expansive. On the 16th September 1948, their first child, a son named Jefferson was born. He was soon followed by his brother, Julian in 1953 and sister, Lorraine in 1957. Susan and James, due to their busy schedule hired a nanny to care for their children. Susan and James continued to spend time together, however this became a rare occurrence by the early 1960s and even as early as 1954, the amount of time they spent together and with their children began to wain. James started to spend more time collecting, repairing or restoring cars with his good friend Eric and Susan began to spend more time working and travelling to various locations for work, this was in part due to her needing to earn a steady income to provide James with enough money to buy cars. They continued to spend less time together and blamed each other when asked who has originally caused to other to spend more time doing their respective activities. By the 1960s even when they did go on a yacht holiday, Susan would spend many hours working which would cause James to read car magazines or have long phone conversations with Eric. From 1967 Eric accompanied James on the majority of his holidays as when Susan would wish to spend time with James after she finally finished her work, he would often be to busy, in turn this would cause Susan to resume he work, which would cause James to continue spending time with Eric. Their children consistently said by this point both their parents would seldom be seen, with Susan only occasionally attending family meals (as she got up earlier than James or her children) she would often call to them “goodnight” if she weren’t in the phone or in a meeting as she often was, James would either be in his car warehouse, workshop or out buying, and occasionally stealing cars, often with Eric. He would struggle to find the time to spend time with his children and would eat snack food so he could work on cars at the same time, he would barely say a word when his children spoke to him, unless it was about cars, then he would launch into a highly-detailed description of each car. This continued to be a problem affecting James and Susan’s marriage for many years and had a profound effect on their children and other relatives.